Editor’s Note: This article is an opinion based on facts and is meant as infotainment. Don’t freak out we updated this article for 2019. This is our fifth time ranking the worst neighborhoods to live in Knoxville.

And while the city consistently ranks as one of the best places to live in the country thanks in part to a strong economy and tons of entertainment, it’s not all rainbows and sunshine in Knoxville. Some neighborhoods aren’t as great as others.

So the question arises, which Knoxville neighborhoods are the worst, and which are the best?

Today, we’ll use science and data to determine which Knoxville hoods need a little tender loving care – the sore thumbs of the Knoxville area if you will. Realistically, you can’t expect all the neighborhoods to be amazing, although Colonial Village ranks way above the rest.

We examined 34 of Knoxville’s neighborhoods to find out the worst places to live. These places don’t quite measure up to Knoxville’s reputation.

How we determined the worst Knoxville hoods in 2019

To figure out how bad a place is to live in, we only needed to know what kinds of things people like and then decide what places have the least amount of those things. We threw the following criteria into this analysis in order to get the best, most complete results possible. We used this set of criteria for each neighborhood in Knoxville:

High unemployment (Less jobs)

Low median income (Less pay)

Low population density (No things to do)

Low home values (No one’s willing to pay to live here)

High crime (Estimated)

Then, we ranked each neighborhood in Knoxville, Tennessee for each of these criteria from worst to best.

Next, we averaged the individual rankings for each criteria into a “Worst Score”.

The neighborhood with the lowest “Worst Score” ranks as the worst neighborhood of Knoxville.

Read on below to learn more about these terrible places around Knoxville to live. Or skip to the end to see the list of all 34 neighborhoods ranked from worst to best.

This list is a scientific analysis based on real data and is completely unbiased. Hold on to your pants.

Old North Knoxville is a neighborhood in Knoxville, Tennessee, United States, located just north of the city’s downtown area. Initially established as the town of North Knoxville in the late-19th century, the area was a prominent suburb for Knoxville’s upper middle and professional classes until the 1950s. After a period of decline, preservationists began restoring many of the neighborhood’s houses in the 1980s. In 1992, over 400 houses and secondary structures in the neighborhood were added to the National Register of Historic Places as the Old North Knoxville Historic District.